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More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler’s mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century.

Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre–Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.

Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, and a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, there are over 500,000 copies of Kindred in print. The intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed within the original work remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere.

Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Adapting any prose novel to the graphic format is an audacious undertaking at the best of times, but translating Octavia E. Butler’s fearsomely powerful work in particular must surely have been a herculean task. Yet Damian Duffy and John Jennings have managed it…A worthy and powerful supplement to a classic.”

About the Author

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947–2006), often referred to as the “grand dame of science fiction,” was born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947. She received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena City College, and also attended California State University in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles. Butler was the first science-fiction writer to win a MacArthur Fellowship (“genius” grant). She won the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and the Nebula and Hugo Awards, among others.

John Jennings co-edited the Eisner Award–winning anthology The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. He is professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside and was awarded the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.

Damian Duffy, cartoonist, writer, and comics letterer, is a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and a founder of Eye Trauma Studios (eyetrauma.net). His first published graphic novel, The Hole: Consumer Culture, created with artist John Jennings, was released by Front 40 Press in 2008. Along with Jennings, Duffy has curated several comics art shows, including Other Heroes: African American Comic Book Creators, Characters and Archetypes and Out of Sequence: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics, and published the art book Black Comix: African American Independent Comics Art and Culture. He has also published scholarly essays in comics form on curation, new media, diversity, and critical pedagogy.

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Octavia Butler's Kindred is one of a handful of "must-read" books. The story - of a young woman in 1976 California who is inexplicably transported back in time to 19th century Maryland to (repeatedly) save the life of her distant ancestor - is a powerful commentary on race, how the institution of slavery has impacted America in the present, and asks readers to consider hard, uncomfortable questions about who we as a nation are, who we want to be, and how should we remember and consider the past. I am overjoyed that this work is finally a graphic novel.

As with any story that is translated into another medium, there are gems and important plot points that are lost. Among those in _Kindred_ is the inter-racial nature of the protagonist's marriage, and many of the details of how each experiences the 19th century given their race. Sometimes these omissions and editorial decisions get in the way of the story or its impact. In the case of the graphic novel adaptation, there is still plenty of gut-wrenching material and thought-provoking issues raised that the spirit of the story remains true to what Butler wrote.

Jenning's artwork cleverly brings Duffy's adaptation to life - the variations of color and shading as well as the illustrations of the characters themselves don't distract from the story, and in many respects add to it (particularly in "The Fight" and the Epilogue). For readers unfamiliar with Butler's work, I cannot recommend _Kindred_ highly enough. For fans of graphic novels (or those who prefer this medium to the source text), the themes, message and plot remain close to the book, with little interference (and some graphic assistance), making this a recommended read.

Duffy is faithful and if anything this adaptation intensifies the impact of Octavia Butler's powerful story. This is NOT a comic book and is possibly too intense for children. However, this graphic novel is an indispensable tool for understanding the horrors of our history.

Kindred is a story of a black woman, Dana, who on her birthday jumps back in time, to early 1800s. She saves the life of a young boy, Rufus, who is a son of a plantation owner and, surprisingly, her ancestor. She keeps jumping between the modern day and the 1800s, seeing the reality of slavery. It's a story about loss of control: it drills down how completely the slaves' lives were dictated by their owners. It's about being afraid, and also about getting used to bad situation.

I'm not completely sold on the drawing style of the comic, but from what I know, it seems to capture the essence of the Octavia E. Butler novel. I still get the feeling that as powerful as the comic is, it's still a barebones version of the original.

My international college freshmen thoroughly enjoyed an old classic with a 21st century visual format! Endless important conversation was prompted about diversity in the United States and the history of slavery. It coupled well with a screening of Jordan Peele's Get Out at the start of the semester. Certain to keep you students or, in fact, anyone interested in understanding more about the origins of the systematized and embedded practice of racism in the US of A today!